


bury my heart on the coals

by Ias



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Moving On, Schmoop, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-23 11:54:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3767188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bard picked up his family and moved to a strange house in the country to escape his own personal ghosts; little did he expect to find his new home was already haunted, this time quite literally. Living alongside a spirit turns out to be easier said than done, but as time goes on and he and Thranduil grow closer, Bard begins to wonder what it means to care for someone who is already dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [焚火葬心（bury my heart on the coals）](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3811066) by [Morrey_Liu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morrey_Liu/pseuds/Morrey_Liu)



> I completed this story for the Barduil Big Bang, and worked alongside the phenomenally talented [bootycap](http://bootycap.tumblr.com/)! You can find her amazing art to go along with this story [right here](http://bootycap.tumblr.com/post/116691088745/i-had-the-amazing-luck-and-absolute-pleasure-of/)! . There's also a soundtrack to go along with this fic that you can find [right here!](http://8tracks.com/ias/whispers-in-the-dark/)
> 
> Lots of love to [Kyra](http://cutlerbeckettt.tumblr.com/) who was kind enough to beta this story for me. ^_^

"Da, I think there's something wrong with our house."

Bard looked up, pausing in his efforts to wedge the paint roller between the bathtub and the sink without splattering the porcelain. Tilda stood in the doorway to their new bathroom, her eyes dark with the sort of seriousness that only children have. Her clothes were streaked with dust and paint, the two most common elements in the Bowman household since they started moving in a few days ago. He could hardly remember what the floors looked like under their drop cloths.

He set down the roller in its pan and wiped his hands on his own jeans. "Did Bain break another lamp?"

Tilda shook her head, picking at the hem of her shirt. "No."

"A can of paint spilled?"

"No, Da." Tilda pouted, looking at Bard as if she was about to deliver some very bad news. "I think a ghost lives here."

"A ghost?" Bard raised his eyebrows with a faint sense of relief. Before they left the old house, it had been a leprechaun; in the months when they were still trying to sell it, the yard had been full of giant earthworms. "That sounds serious."

Tilda's small arms laced over her chest. "I mean it, Da. Someone keeps taking the books off my shelf, and leaving them around the room."

Bard wiped his forehead with the back of his knuckles, and instantly regretted it when he glanced at his paint-covered hands. There wasn't going to be an inch of him that didn't have Eggshell #9 on it by the time they were done remodeling. "And you don't think it could have been one of your siblings?"

"I know it for sure," Tilda said. "It happens when I'm in the room sometimes, with the door closed." She drew herself up. "Plus, I've _seen_ him. He talks to me."

"Does he?" Bard said in good humor, picking up the paint roller again. "Does this ghost have a name?"

Tilda shook her head. "He hasn't told me."

"But it's a boy ghost." Bard was beginning to think he could see where this was going.

"No, it's a man. He's very tall and has long white hair."

Bard paused, looking at Tilda more shrewdly. Tilda looked at him with the same imploring expression. Imaginary friends were one thing. Making up fully grown men was another. "What else has this ghost said to you, Tilda?"

She thought about it, chewing her lip. "Not much. He just walks around most of the time, looking at stuff. Sometimes he asks me who I am and why I'm in his house. I think he used to live here."

"Is Tilda talking about the ghost again?" Bain wove around his sister to slip into the bathroom, sticking a glass under the tap. His boots and jeans were muddy—after one too many household disasters, Bain had been relegated to outdoor duties. "I've seen it too."

Bard looked at him, resisting the urge to raise an eyebrow. "You have?" Tilda's own expression went from hopeful to incredulous as Bain knocked back the glass of water.

"Sure," Bain said with a shrug. "It comes into my room every morning and dances the Macarena."

"Liar!" Tilda cried, small hands swiping at her brother. Bain danced away, his laughter ringing down the hallway after him. Tilda crossed her arms and made no move to follow.

"Bring that glass back when you're done," Bard called after him. He turned his attention to his daughter. "Tilda, does this ghost frighten you?"

She thought about it. "No," she decided at last. "He just seems sad. I think he wants us to move out of his house."

And there it was. Bard sighed. He had expected something like this to come up—Tilda had never wanted to leave their old house. She'd grown up there; it was the only home she'd ever known. From the moment he’d told her the family was going to move she had fought it with every fiber of her being, coming up with new reasons every week why they shouldn’t have to go. But he had to hope that she could find a new one here, in a new place without the thickness of dead memories hanging around it. A fresh start. That's what they all needed. And if Tilda had to invent some kind of creepy ghost figure in order to cope with the change, he'd do whatever he could to help the transition.

Tilda was watching him with wide eyes. "Do you believe me, Da?" she asked.

Bard set down the roller again and shuffled over so that he was kneeling at his daughter's eye-level. "Absolutely," he said with a soft smile. "But you know, Tilda, this is our home now. We're going to live here, and hopefully, we won't ever have to move again."

Tilda looked down, a small frown creasing her brow. "We didn't _have_ to move…"

Bard swallowed past the lump growing in his throat. They’d had this talk many times before. "Tell you what—we'll both keep an eye out for him, and if either of us sees him, we'll ask him to leave."

"But I don't want the ghost to go!" Tilda said. "This is his house. He told me so."

"Well, if he can produce a signed certificate of ownership, I will happily hand it over to him," Bard replied with a hint of sarcasm.

Tilda sighed. "I'm going to tell him you said that." She scurried off before Bard could make a reply. Her footsteps pounded on the old floorboards as she went, tracking her movement throughout the house.

Bard settled onto the floor, eyes wandering out the window thrown open to let out the smell of paint fumes. He wasn't overly concerned—Tilda had always had an active imagination. He'd never been superstitious, but the thought of his daughter being followed around by a tall, silent specter was a little unnerving. After asking his family to pick up and move several states away, a few paranormal imaginings were a small price to pay.

He let his head fall back on the bathroom counter behind him with a hollow clunk. He remembered the first time they had driven up to the house, the moving van outside the only evidence that this was to be their new home. The shutters were battered pale-blue where the paint hadn’t chipped away to reveal the greying wood beneath; the yard was a riot of tall grass and weeds, with a garden pressed close to the paneled sides doing its best to drag the house back into the dirt. Their neighbors were a good distance away, spread out down the gravel road like breadcrumbs.

Sigrid had known enough not to comment; Bain had exclaimed “We’re going to _live_ here?” in his most dubious tone.

“It’s a bit of a fixer-upper,” Bard had said, fighting down the anxiety which had been building in his chest all day. “It’ll be fun. We’ll get to make it whatever we want it to be.”

Tilda had slumped lower in her seat, refusing to look out the window. As they spent the rest of the day moving all the furniture and boxes into the house, she had set out to explore the area like it was a hotel room, with all the excitement of being in a place she didn’t actually expect to stay in. She’d been comparing everything to the old house ever since—how the old refrigerator door would always stay open, and the old floors weren’t so loud, and her _real_ bedroom had a bigger closet she could play in. Bard had tried to help her focus on the positives, like the view of the small lake down the hill and the deer that would occasionally wander through the back lawn. This was a peaceful place—forgotten, tucked away. With a new job working from home, it was the isolation that Bard needed. But Tilda wouldn’t understand that yet. So until she did, it seemed their house was haunted.

He picked up the paint roller again, turning back to the hideous yellow wallpaper covering the bathroom walls. He could only assume that the previous owner had picked it out while feverish, or dead drunk. With a slow swipe, he obliterated another stripe with a fresh layer of color. The air smelled like paint and sweet spring air from the open window. Piece by piece, they'd make this home their own.

 

 

When Bard finally settled the kids into bed that night he was already exhausted. The bathroom paint was set and drying, but there were a dozen more paint buckets waiting to be transferred onto the walls. Not to mention the fact that the hot water wasn’t flowing properly, and the air conditioning was finicky, and on top of everything Bain had managed to break a window while tossing a ball around outside. Now Bard trooped back to his bedroom, shoulders slumping, and just focused on going to bed.

He wound a path around the boxes covering the floor of his bedroom. Furniture was pushed up against the walls where there was room, and any flat surface had been piled with more detritus. All of his most valuable possessions had been moved in first, deposited in his room for safe-keeping where they were least likely to face paint or broken glass. Almost automatically, his eyes settled on a simple wooden jewelry box on the corner of the dresser, one corner nearly pushed off the side.

He rose from his bed, walking with slow quiet steps until he stood in front of it. He straightened the box, moving it safely away from the edge and resting his fingers on the lid. He'd carved it himself, a long time ago. The edges were still rough, marked with the little imperfections he'd been unable to sand away. His wife had loved it, perhaps even more than the emerald necklace nestled inside when Bard popped the lid open. He could remember the way those jewels looked against his wife's throat, the way they made her eyes sparkle.

 He closed the lid again, his mouth twisting painfully. For all the clutter, the room still felt cold and empty. Unlived in. They'd brought that feeling with them, Bard couldn't help but think. That would pass in time, just like Tilda's ghosts.

Or so Bard hoped.

He settled onto the bed with a sigh that welled up deep, eyes roving the clutter. There was so much to do, yet for everything he accomplished it seemed like five new tasks sprang up. Even exhausted before bed, he couldn't seem to sleep. There was something he had to do first.

He couldn't remember when he started. He'd never been one for prayer, or journaling. His wife had always borne the burden of hearing about his day, and in telling her he felt better every time. After she passed away, well, it was difficult. His relatives encouraged him to pray, but as Bard saw it there was nothing any deity could give him unless they planned on a miracle of a Lazarus proportion. So instead, he had just started to speak one night, just like he’d used to before the worst had happened. He’d been doing it ever since.

"Hey, darling," Bard said as he reached down to unlace his boots. "Shoes in the house. I know what you'd have to say about that. You'll have to forgive me. Until we're finished moving in I'm terrified of stepping on a loose nail." He kicked his boots off and set to changing into his clothes, speaking as he did. "The kids aren't taking to the house yet, but I suppose I should have expected that. You were always better at convincing them of things than I. It would sure be easier to do all of this with you here." He sighed, stripping off his shirt and exchanging it for a simple grey one he wore to bed. "The house is nice. It's a little isolated, but maybe that's good. You remember how nosy our neighbors used to be. Now there will be no one to bother us but ourselves." He leaned back on the pillow. "I think we'll be alright here. Maybe for the first time in a while."

He lay silently for a moment, as if he might hear her voice from the pillow beside him, already thick with sleep. There was only silence. Not even the sound of his own voice could make the room feel any less empty. It did not feel like a release—it felt like picking at a scab which never truly healed, but one which itched every night nonetheless.

He leaned over and turned off the light. The darkness of the room was pierced by moonlight from the window across the room, pale curtains hanging translucent. Bard stared at it, feeling his eyelids begin to droop. The house creaked and shifted around him, seeming to settle itself down into sleep alongside him. He couldn’t help but feel like it was watching him, quiet and contemplative, as he drifted off into something beyond the room and finally closed his eyes.

 

 

 

After a month the drop cloths came up, and the worst of the boxes were either unpacked or banished to the attic. Shoes were left at the door and the clutter of the move was replaced with the clutter of everyday life: dishes piled in the sink, homework strewn on the table, toy tableaus forgotten in the middle of the hallway. New routines tentatively began to take shape. The kids started at their new schools, and Bard would spend the early mornings before they left sitting on the back patio with a cup of coffee, looking out over the river. His days were, for the most part, spent alone, working at his computer until the rumble of the bus at the end of the lane signaled his kids getting home. They were settling in. The comfort of mundane life returned.

Unfortunately, not all parts of mundane life were comfortable.

"Da!" Came the familiar shriek. Bard closed the spreadsheet he’d been working on with a sigh. He made his way up the stairs to Sigrid's room, where his three children were standing around and shouting at each other at increasing decibels.

"I told you not to touch my stuff!" Sigrid yelled at Bain.

"I don't care about your stupid bracelets!" Bain retorted.

"Stop fighting! Stop it!" Tilda cried.

"What's going on here?" Bard spoke over the noise. A brief moment of silence as the children turned to him wild-eyed. Then the room exploded again.

"Bain's been taking my things again—"

"Have _not_ , you just lost them—"

"It wasn't him! Stop being so stupid"

"Alright, alright," Bard said, raising his hands. "Oldest to youngest, go."

"Bain's been sneaking into my room and stealing my jewelry," Sigrid said without hesitation, crossing her arms smugly. "I'm missing a pair of earrings and a necklace."

"Why would I want any of that?" Bain grumbled. "It looks tacky anyways."

Sigrid fumed. "They fooled my friend Angie. She thought they were real diamonds."

"Well, Angie probably also thinks Santa—” At a warning look from Bard, Bain glanced in Tilda’s direction before finishing lamely, “rides a yellow elephant.”

"Bain, you deny taking them?" Bard interrupted before the argument could take off again.

"Of course I do," Bain said. "I never even come in this room. It smells like one flower ate another flower and puked it back up again."

"Well your room smells like something’s been decomposing in a barrel of sweat for the past ten years!" Sigrid shot back.

"I know who took the jewelry!" Tilda cried at the top of her high voice. Sigrid and Bain immediately stopped talking. Bard stared at her expectantly. Tilda took a breath. "It was the ghost."

Sigrid groaned and Bain threw his hands up in the air. Even Bard felt his heart sink a little in his chest. He'd hoped as they settled into their new home that Tilda would let her ghosts fade away. 

"Let me guess, the ghost was also the one who disorganized my entire bookshelf as well," Bain said, rolling his eyes.

"He just wanted to see what books you had brought!" She shot Bain a sly look. "He said you have bad taste." 

"Tilda," Bard began, but she turned on him with hurt eyes. She recognized his tone: it was the careful, gentle voice he used to when explaining the painful edges of reality. 

"You don't believe me either!" she cried. "Well, I don't care. I know he's real!" Tilda turned and fled the room, her feet thudding on the wooden floors all the way down the stairs. Bard cast a look on his other two children, who were torn between looking guilty and sullen.

"What?" Bain said. "She's always talking about the ghost. All the kids at school think she's weird."

"Really Da," Sigrid agreed. "You should tell her to stop. It's not healthy."

Bard sighed. "Bain, help your sister search her room for the missing jewelry. Then Sigrid can search your room so she knows you didn't take it." He walked away from the mutual sound of complaints and went looking for Tilda.

He found her huddled on the steps of the back porch, her thin knees pulled tight to her chest. He held back for a moment, trying to make out the faint sound of her voice as it whispered into the crook of her arm. The back lawn, which was more of a field, ran down a sloping hill to the edge of the little lake far below. Trees leaned over it at haphazard angles, and the over houses across from it looked distant, unreachable. He lingered behind in the doorway for a moment, listening to her whisper into the crook of her arm. As he stepped forward at last, the whispers stopped.

A long pause without acknowledgement. "I don't want to talk to you," she said at last.

Bard sighed quietly to himself. "Alright. Who are you talking to?"

"The ghost," she replied.

"The ghost," Bard echoed. He sank down beside her on the steps, leaning his elbows on his legs. "Where is he now?"

Tilda craned her neck to see around him. "You're sitting right next to him."

The motion was involuntary. It transcended belief or skepticism. Like it was being pulled by a string, Bard's head turned. The space beside him was as empty as ever, but the air was heavy with expectation. Bard nearly laughed at himself for the knee-jerk reaction to look, as if he expected anything but an empty step. He didn't laugh. When he turned back to Tilda, she was watching him.

"You can't see him," she said glumly. "He told me."

"Why can't I see him?"

Tilda sighed. "You're too _real_."

"So the ghost isn't real?"

"No. There's different kinds of real-ness. You're the wrong kind."

Bard almost smiled. It all had its own kind of logic. Children were rarely irrational, he'd found. He hadn't been able to reason Tilda out of the belief that a monster with hundreds of hands lived beneath her bed; he'd banished it with a stuffed dragon to watch over her, and she'd never had trouble sleeping again. The solution made sense when you considered the problem. Adults were the only ones that tried to outwit the soul with the mind. Growing up meant realizing that the stuffed dragon was only cloth and padding, but the monsters were still real.

Bard shook his head. "What's the ghost saying now?"

Tilda bit at the inside of her cheek. "He isn't saying anything."

The silence drew out between Bard and his daughter. He wanted to reach out to her, but he knew she was too old for a hug and a kiss to fix it. They'd have to work things out some other way. Back to the stuffed dragon approach. "So the ghost took Sigrid's jewelry."

Tilda nodded.

"Where did he put it?"

"I don't know."

Bard repressed a sigh. "Well, if you do know where the jewelry got to, you can tell me. I promise I won't be mad."

Tilda turned to him, her eyes filled with hurt. "I didn't take them, Da. I promise."

"Okay," Bard said gently. "I believe you." This time, he realized he meant it. 

As if reading his thoughts, Tilda's lip stuck out. "You said you believed me about the ghost before. I don't think you do."

Bard struggled to find the words to broach the subject. "Tilda, why do you talk to the ghost?"

Tilda shrugged her narrow shoulders. "Because he's here. And he looks lonely."

"Why does he look lonely?"

"I don't know. He just does. He's kind of mean, but it's just because he's sad."

"Do you think maybe you should stop talking to him?" Bard suggested. "Maybe talk to more people at your school instead?"

Tilda shook her head stubbornly. "I don't want to. I want to help him."

Bard almost sighed, but a smile crossed his lips all the same. His youngest had always been compassionate to a fault. Once they had found a bird that had hit a window and broken its wings. Tilda cared for it until it died a week later, never getting tired of trying to feed it. Maybe it wasn't so strange that she could empathize so strongly with an imaginary ghost. 

"Alright," Bard said. "What can we do to help this ghost?"

Tilda thought about it. "I don't know. He seems to like shiny things. Maybe we could buy something pretty and leave it out for him?"

Bard nodded. "That sounds fair. You can come with me in town and pick a few things out."

Tilda grinned. "Thanks Da! I'm sure the ghost will be happy."

The next time they went into town they picked up some convincing costume jewelry from the local thrift store and put it in a little bowl outside of Tilda's room. When one of the necklaces was gone the next morning, Bard smiled to himself. He wondered where Tilda was hiding them. She was bound to get bored eventually, and Sigrid would get her jewelry back. And if it meant entertaining the “ghost” for a little longer, he didn't mind.

 

 

Going to bed after nearly a full day of hauling extra boxes into the attic, Bard felt as if his body was a balloon losing all its air. His muscles felt sore, weak, beaten. His mind even more so. Yet he still lay awake a few minutes more, staring at the wall across from him as if it wasn't completely blank. For a while, he couldn't bring himself to speak. He kept thinking of Tilda's ghost, the whispers she would speak into her hand. Could he really tell her to stop, when he lay here talking to his dead wife at night? Maybe he understood Tilda better than he thought. He couldn't make himself stop either. 

"I'm worried, Ingrid," Bard sighed. "Sigrid and Bain are always fighting, and Tilda... I don't want her to pull away from reality. But she's so convinced." Bard stared at the ceiling. "Part of me wishes it was real," he said tonelessly. "If there was such thing as ghosts, maybe—maybe you—" His voice choked itself into nothing. He didn't try again.

Almost violently, he rolled over to tug the lamp chain and plunge the room into darkness. He lay awake for a long time, steeping in the darkness, listening to the house murmur and eddy around him. Sleep toyed with him, tugging him under and then dragging him back to awareness with every passing minute, until finally he managed to fight his way deeper into the dark. 

Hours later, Bard jolted awake. He had come out of sleep suddenly, but not from fear—he hadn't been dreaming, and his pulse and breathing stayed regular. He'd been awakened by the sudden and intense sensation that someone was lying in the bed with him.  He hadn't felt afraid—the sensation had been one of contentment, yet it had been strong enough to startle him awake. The pillow beside him was empty and unruffled, the blankets smooth. Bard pressed his palm to the surface of the bed and expected it to be warm—his hand came away cool with the night. He curled it tighter. The room was as empty as ever.

He rolled over, trying to banish the feeling. No one had slept beside him in years. It was merely an echo of something long gone that his body hadn't forgotten yet. But when the floorboards near the end of his bed gave a quiet, dusty creak, Bard found himself sitting upright and looking to the space as if an invisible foot could have tread across the floor.

"Is someone here?" Bard asked, even though the answer to the question was obvious. His voice sounded flat, like the noise was unwelcome. Bard remained upright for a long time, staring at nothing, breathing quietly, simply listening to the sounds of the house around him. He did not feel as if he was being watched. Instead, it was as if something was tucked away, hiding until he fell back asleep and it—whatever it was—could resume its nightly routines, the same way a deer might freeze when a hiker chanced too close. It felt almost as if Bard waited still and quiet for long enough, he might catch a glimpse of something too wary to be seen.

The room remained motionless and dark. With a quiet sigh, Bard lay back down. His eyes were sore—closing them brought instant relief. He would only rest for a while, perhaps pretend to sleep. It wasn't long before he felt himself drifting away, too comfortable and tired to care, even when that faint suggestion of another presence in the bed beside him stirred on the edges of his consciousness. It felt good to fall asleep beside someone again. Even if they were only a dream.

 

 

Time passed.

They'd grown used to the rhythms of the house, which doors would swing open unless you pushed them all the way closed, which floorboards creaked on their own at night. Things seemed to fall off certain shelves no matter how well-placed they were—Bard suspected anything from an uneven grade to a rogue draft. When he lay in bed at night he could track the sounds of the house as if another person was travelling through it, touching a gentle chord on his life and lulling him to sleep as gently as the sound of quiet breaths beside him.

He found he was growing fonder of their new home every day, as if the memories the house held were seeping into his own. He felt like the wood on the banisters, polished by decades of different hands, had been smoothed by his own fingers. The dent in the wall near the sink seemed to remind him a story he knew, yet one which had happened years before he even laid eyes on the house. There was some piece of the past that had stayed alive here, memories that lingered on in the folds of the curtains. Maybe they weren’t his, but he’d come to treasure what was left of them all the same.

Sigrid and Bain were doing well in school, making friends and getting along well with their teacher. Even Tilda had started mentioning her classmates, but not nearly as often as she still spoke of the ghost. It had been months now since moving in, and she finally seemed to have started accepting their new home; but the tall man with the long, pale hair had failed to see himself out. He’d handled it as best he could, along with the missing items and rearranged items (almost always books) that came along with it. He could cope with a “ghost” in the house as long as it behaved itself.

Bard was clearing away the last of the moving boxes when he noticed his wife's necklace was missing.

The open jewelry box scarcely registered as he stuffed the smaller boxes in their larger counterparts, clearing packing peanuts off the surface of the dresser. He was just about to snap it closed without a second thought when the familiar silvery gleam failed to catch the light from inside. He stopped, setting the boxes down. The necklace was gone.

Heart beating faster, Bard picked up the jewelry box and carried it down the stairs. His children were sitting at the table, Tilda with her homework and Sigrid and Bain with a bag of chips between them. Their laughter and chatter didn't stop until Bard set the jewelry box down on the table. Their eyes traveled to it, uncomprehending.

"Kids," Bard said in a carefully level voice, "Did any of you take your mother's necklace from this box?"

Resounding silence replied. "I'm not angry," Bard said. "But that necklace is very special, and I want to keep it safe." Bard looked pointedly at Sigrid when no one else stepped forward. He knew how much she admired that necklace, and he'd let her wear it on a few occasions. But she'd always asked.

She widened her eyes at him. "Da, I didn't take it. I know better."

"Well it wasn't me," Bain said flippantly. "Green's not my color."

Tilda slumped a little lower in her seat as her siblings made their excuses. Bard fixed her with a stern gaze, his arms crossing over his chest.

"Tilda?" he said.

She shook her head. "I didn’t take it."

Bard paused. "Well, if no one at this table took it, that means that it's been stolen. And I'll have to call the police."

Tilda's eyes grew large. "But Da, you're forgetting the ghost. He probably took it."

Irritation rose unbidden. "Tilda, this is serious," Bard said.

"So am I!" she huffed. "If none of us took it, and it's gone, then it was probably the ghost."

"Grow up, Tild," Bain muttered under his breath. "Ghosts aren't real."

Tilda's foot lashed out at him under the table, making him yelp. "Just because you're too dumb to see him doesn’t mean he isn't there!" Tilda snapped. "He took the necklace, I'm positive! I can ask him where he put it, tell him it's important—"

"That’s enough," Bard said, his voice rising in spite of himself. Tilda fell silent, chewing her lip. "Tilda, you know that necklace was your mother's. It's very important to me. I promise, if you just tell me where it is, I won't be mad at you."

"I'm not even tall enough to reach up on your dresser," Tilda protested. Her lip was trembling now. "I'm sorry, Da, I don't want mom's necklace to be missing either. Just give me a chance to ask him... I’m sure he’ll give it back.”

Bard felt a twinge in his chest as he looked into Tilda’s eyes. Whatever she was going through, reprimanding her wouldn’t solve any of it. With a few short strides he crossed the distance between them and scooped Tilda up into a hug like he had when she was so much smaller. Sigrid and Bain's concerned eyes were on him as he stroked Tilda's hair. "It's alright," he said quietly. "We'll all look around the room in case it fell, and if we can't find it we'll call someone tomorrow. Okay?"

He felt Tilda nod against his shoulder. “I’ll ask the ghost tonight,” she mumbled. Bard didn’t tell her not to.

The next morning, he woke up to find the jewelry box on his bedside table, the emerald necklace glittering inside. He sat up, looking blearily around the room drenched in early morning sunlight. His door was closed, the room as he'd left it. If Tilda had snuck in at night, the sound of a chair scraping across the floor to reach the dresser certainly would have woken him if the opening door had not. Bard was notoriously a light sleeper. If someone had been in his room, let alone right beside his bed, he would have known it.

Yet here the box was, necklace and all, sitting nonchalantly within arm’s reach as if he had left it there before bed. Bard reached out, half expecting the necklace to melt away under his fingers. It was as real as ever, though the metal felt strangely cold to his fingers. It must have been Tilda. There was no other explanation.

When he came down to breakfast the next day he found Tilda sitting at the table with a mouthful of cheerios. “The ghost said he’d give the necklace back!” she said cheerfully. “He was grumpy about it, but I think he knew how much you wanted it.”

“Well,” Bard said a tad awkwardly, ruffling her hair. “Tell him I said thank you, then.”

Tilda grinned a sugary smile and slurped up the rest of her milk. “He also told me his name.”

"Oh?" Bard said. "I thought you said he didn't like to talk."

Tilda nodded. "I bothered him until he told me. I think he felt bad about the necklace.”

Bard chuckled in spite of himself. "Alright. What is our mysterious housemate’s name?”

"Thranduil."

"Thandeel?" Bard tilted his head.

"No, da," Tilda said in exasperation. "Thran. Doo. Eel. If you say it wrong he'll get mad."

"Thranduil," Bard said, rolling the word around his mouth. It was very strange. He couldn't imagine where Tilda could have come up with it. "What happens if he gets angry?"

Tilda shrugged. "He might stop talking to me for good."

Bard merely shook his head as Tilda focused on her cereal, repeating the name in his mind. _Thranduil_. He hadn’t heard anything like it before. It had a pleasant sound to it. As Bard watched his daughter from across the table, part of him started to wonder.

 

 

 

Buying groceries had never come easy to Bard, let alone cooking for anyone outside his immediate family. He stared at the wall of boxed cookie mixes, wondering which one was least likely to end up in giving one of Tilda's classmates a horrific food allergy. The shopping cart by his side was already packed—all that was left was to find something palatable and hopefully non-lethal to contribute to the Science Fair snack table. As the new parent in town, he didn't know anyone to ask about what was expected from him. Maybe he was going to go a bit overboard, but if it meant helping Tilda fit in at her new school, he'd do it gladly.

As he wavered between the box of snickerdoodles in one hand and sugar cookies in the other, a woman with frizzy brown hair and a knit cap stepped up beside him and went straight for chocolate chip, pulling down three boxes with businesslike gestures. She must have felt Bard watching her, because her eyes flicked from the boxes in his hands to the slight frown on his face.

"You look a bit lost," she said kindly.

Bard chuckled. "They're for the Science Fair. I like peanut butter myself, but some people are allergic."

The woman gave the boxes another cursory glance. "Snickerdoodle," she said decisively. "Every other parent is going to go for sugar cookies, after all." Her eyes found Bard's overstuffed cart. "Looks like you're ready to feed a small army there."

Bard laughed. "Three kids, two of them teenagers. An army might have less of an appetite." After a moment, he held out his hand. "I'm Bard, by the way."

She shook it with a firm grip. "Hilda. You folks are new in town, aren't you?"

"We just moved in on Dale Street," Bard confirmed.

"Dale?" Hilda raised her eyebrows. "I thought I saw that old place finally sold. I suppose you've heard folks say that it's haunted."

"Haunted?" Bard laughed, though he didn't find it particularly funny. A strange feeling was working its way through his chest. "Why do they say that?"

"Well depending on your outlook, they say it because it's true," Hilda said offhandedly. "I suppose people have seen a fair amount of strangeness around that house for as long as I can remember. Things moving around when no one's home, voices and noises in the night, seeing someone in the window who isn't really there. Nothing serious, mind you,” she said quickly. “Things stay pretty quiet up there. But there’s always been something strange about the old place.”

A pause drew out between them as Bard flashed back on the house’s little idiosyncrasies he’d simply taken for granted. He’d never seen any figures in the windows, but had he ever really looked? "Do you believe it’s haunted?" Bard asked at last.

Hilda looked at him shrewdly. "You're living in that house now. Are you sure you want to know the answer?" When Bard made no reply, she smiled apologetically. "I'm sorry. That's not very neighborly of me, to go spooking you like that. Tell you what: I live over on Hickory Way, the place with the bright blue door. Bring your kids over for dinner sometime, before they eat you out of house and home. My husband grills a mean hamburger."

Bard smiled, and shook her hand. "I'll have to take you up on that."

As Bard pulled up the gravel driveway to his house, he sat in the car long after the engine had already stilled. The house leaned over him, not particularly intimidating in the daylight hours. The paint on the shutters still needed a new coat, and the colors seemed washed out with age—but the overgrown rosebushes and slanting porch lent a wild sort of charm. It didn't look like a place of death, the kind of house an unsuspecting family pulls up to at the beginning of a horror movie. It looked like a home, and if that home had belonged to many different people, then maybe they had each left a piece of themselves behind. If that's what it meant to have a ghost, Bard wouldn't complain. He hoped he could press a piece of himself to the house, in the new shade of paint in the upstairs bathroom, the new handles on the doors. There were worse legacies to leave behind.

Later that night, long after he should have gone to sleep, Bard found himself sitting upright on the edge of his bed and staring at the moonlight slanting on the floor. He knew he should slide under the covers and simply go to bed. The idea in his head was practically insane. But he couldn't help it. After speaking with Hilda at the grocery, her words had chased themselves around Bard’s head until he couldn’t hope to ignore them. After all, it wouldn’t take long to prove himself wrong.

He cleared his throat. "Um. Hello." The empty room responded with a resounding, and slightly judgmental, silence.

"You talk to your wife almost every night," Bard muttered to himself. "How is this the line in the sand?" Louder, he began again. "I don't know if you're listening, or if you're even real. My daughter thinks you might be." He shook his head. "I don't believe in this kind of thing. But if you are real, I want to know." He paused, and after a moment, threw his hands up in the air. "So can you give me a sign? Some kind of proof? If I live in a haunted house I'd at least like to be sure about it one way or another."

He sat silently, his breath hardly stirring the air, ears prickling with every faint movement. Nothing happened. "Come on," Bard said. "Thranduil? That's your name, isn't it? Give me a sign, Thranduil, or make a skeptic out of me."

A clunk filled the room as loud as a stone dropped into a well. Bard jolted, his heart pounding, until he looked over at the source—a book had fallen off the shelf. Laughing to himself, he stood up to replace it. He'd have to get a level up here and see if he could fix it. But as he leaned down to pick up the book, the cover caught his eye. At first he didn't recognize it—it was a book he had bought for Bain, who had then outgrown it. On the cover was a grinning skull, illuminated by a tacky green light. _Thirteen Chilling Ghost Stories_ the title proclaimed.

Bard set it back on the shelf. The back of his neck prickled, but when he looked around the room it was as empty as ever. At the same time, something was different—the room felt more present around him, the empty corners filled with the knowledge of something more. The air was as stiff and silent as a held breath. Bard was afraid to puncture it.

He slept on the couch that night. As he lay in the dark, he thought that if their house was in fact haunted, there was a good chance the ghost had an odd sense of humor.


	2. Chapter 2

The days went on without any more mysterious signs from beyond, and life went back to normal. But of course, it wasn’t exactly normal—Bard couldn’t shake the feeling that had clung to him that night in his room, and found it chasing after him in the halls of the house whenever he was home alone. He couldn’t simply shrug and move on. Part of him had to know.

After hours sitting in front of the computer, Bard felt as if his spine was full of packing peanuts. His eyes were bleary from watching a screen, and he covered his face with his hands for a brief moment.

"Wha'cha doing?"

Bard gave a start as Sigrid appeared at his elbow, a curious smile on her face. "Oh, nothing much. Just a bit of research."

Inevitably, her eyes moved to the pile of books on the desk beside Bard's computer, their garish spines grabbing for attention. She lifted one up with a raised eyebrow. “ _Famous Ghosts of the 1800s_? Oh Da, not you too."

"I'm just looking into a few things," Bard said, struggling to keep the defensive tone out of his voice. He was painfully aware of how ridiculous it seemed to be actually entertaining the idea that a ghost might be living—or rather, not-living—in his house.

"It's bad enough with Tilda going on about it all the time," Sigrid groaned. "You're not going to start hanging crosses and garlic everywhere, are you?"

"That's for vampires," Bard corrected absently, his eyes already returning to the article he was reading. "Sigrid, humor me for a moment. Have you ever experienced anything strange since we moved here? Cold spots, things being moved or going missing, that sort of thing?"

"Oh, there's plenty of things like that," Sigrid said. "But all of them have perfectly normal explanations if you stop looking for bogeymen under the bed."

"I used to do that for you every night before you went to sleep," Bard reminded her with a smile.

Sigrid rolled her eyes. "Yeah, until the first night I looked under the bed myself and realized there was nothing there."

Bard sighed. "I'm sure you're right about all this," he said, gesturing to the books in front of him.

"But you're going to keep 'researching' anyway," Sigrid continued for him. "Alright, Da. Ghost hunting isn't the weirdest hobby you could possibly have." She poked him in the side with a playful grin. "And if you see the ghost, ask it what it did with my earrings. I never did find them."

As she left, Bard leaned back in the chair with a quiet sigh. It had been days since the incident with the mysteriously falling book, and nothing strange had happened since. He was beginning to think he was merely giving in to paranoia—until he began looking into the town's history. It had been hard to come by, but after an afternoon spent digging around in the dusty shelves of the library's local records, he'd found something.

According to a local news bill, a manor house overlooking the lake in the same area Bard's house was built had burned down in 1813. There was no list of deaths associated with it, but in a separate article Bard found a reference that at least one man had perished in the blaze. Most of the other information surrounding the property had been lost, and so Bard called the realtor that had sold them the place. She pleaded ignorance about whether the house had been associated with any supernatural occurrences, but stressed that most families that lived there had been in no rush to leave. If there was something haunting his property, it didn't seem to be sinister.

Bard's eyes wandered idly around his office, taking in the disorganized bookshelves and the toys Tilda had left on the windowsill. He liked this place. It felt old and warm and safe, like a familiar dream that you'd walked through many times. It felt as if the house had been expecting him, not in anticipation but in a pleasant sort of waiting with all the time in the world. Now that he was here, he didn't like the idea of moving again.

But if his house was truly haunted, he wanted to know for sure.

 

 

 

Wind sighed in the long grass of the lawn, and Bard lay awake in bed. A storm had passed earlier that day, rain plunking into the gutters and hammering at the roof, gusts of wind sending the drops splattering on the windowpane as he and the kids played a nervous game of Scrabble. The rain had stopped in time for a rosy sunset to drift down under the clouds and then behind the hills, and the house had seemed to breath deep, clean breaths of relief. When night fell in earnest and the kids slid under their covers, the house had creaked and tapped with more activity than Bard had heard before, as if it were checking itself for injuries. He lay awake and listened to it, the soft, almost conversational noises as the house licked its wounds.

A contemplative creak sounded as the soft wind brushed at the windows, sending the leaves rustling outside. Bard stared at the ceiling, watching the patterns the moonlight made shift as the curtains moved. The air was getting warmer. Soon they would need to turn on the air conditioning, but for now the house was open to the outdoors. Bard’s eyes began to feel heavy in his skull, as he finally gave in to the urge to blink. Time seemed to slow as sleep beckoned him onwards, as gossamer as the movement of light and air in his room.

From the foot of his bed, a soft groan of the floorboards more pointed than the house's other exclamations made Bard's eyes shoot open again. The room before him was empty, as it always was. But the emptiness seemed dense, expectant, maybe even charged. It reminded him of the air that had blown through earlier that day, ushering the thunderstorm after it. As Bard watched, the floorboards gave another squeak, this time in a slightly different position. As if someone was moving around the room.

He didn't feel afraid as he fished his legs out of the sheets, the floor creaking even before his bare feet settled on the cool wooden floor. The sounds came slowly, as if they were waiting for him to follow. That might have been a crazy thought. But Bard wasn't tired, and as he slid out of bed and walked to the door, he felt more lucid than he could remember in a long time.

Bard followed the creaks that came from the house. They led him through the hallway and down the stairs, the steps cool under his bare feet. A feeling he couldn’t have explained led him to the kitchen, where he stopped in the doorway for no real reason. The room was dark, lit by a pale blue wash of moonlight from the large window across the room. Nothing out of the ordinary—and yet Bard couldn't stop looking across the room, like there was an itch there on his eye he couldn't stop scratching. And then, as if it had been there the whole time and Bard had only just noticed its existence, he saw it.

A figure was standing at the window.

Bard froze. His eyes were fixed on it, as if he knew that looking away would make it disappear. There was a disconnect between his eyes and his brain, where his brain was struggling to understand what he was seeing but his body had already reacted. Fear pumped hard through his veins, but a sense of excitement as well. He took a hesitant step closer. The figure remained.

"Hello?" Bard called out softly. His voice seemed to settle into the air like dust particles, barely disturbing the silence. The figure did not respond. Bard took another step closer. The apparition was standing in front of the window, staring out over the hills. The gossamer curtains waved gently in the open breeze, paler and more ethereal than he was.

"Thranduil?"

The figure moved. Bard sucked in a harsh breath as it turned, expecting a hideous snarl. As he looked into the stranger's face, his heart seemed to still inside of his chest. The long blonde hair fell straight to frame a striking, angular face. Wary eyes looked out under strong brows, piercing him with a look that was both cold and remote as the moonlight, yet filled with some kind of quiet longing. Anything Bard might have said fled his mind instantly. He merely stood and stared.

The figure's lips moved. Bard's ears strained to hear, but no sound moved the air. "I can't understand you," he said, taking a step forward.

The figure immediately turned, pulling away—within seconds it was fading away.

"Wait!" Bard cried, but it was too late. The person had dissolved into nothing but an unlikely memory. Bard stood there, feeling suddenly cold and barren. "I just want to talk to you," he whispered. The house made no reply. Bard stared out over the landscape that moments ago had been scrutinized by a different pair of eyes. Moonlight plated the surface of the lake in silver, turned the trees into rippling masses of light and dark. It was beautiful, unearthly, strange. It made something twist in Bard's chest.

He closed the window. As it slid shut, something flickered out near the surface of the lake that wasn't leaves or moonlight. Someone was standing by the side of the lake, that long hair unmistakable. Bard's heart continued to beat hard as he watched, the figure turning from the lake to look back towards the house before walking beside the shore. As Bard watched, the image melted away against the shimmering of the lake, and was entirely gone.

The house was quiet for the rest of the night, but Bard lay awake and still.

 

 

 

 

There was always room for disbelief. Rational explanations could always be found. Perhaps Bard had been too tired, his eyes bleary, his mind still half-asleep. With his daughter's talk of the ghost, it would not be difficult for his mind to conjure up a specter at the window, or walking along the lakeside. He could convince himself of those things very easily. But the house had settled around him like a living thing, something warm and alive, and in its grip Bard could accept nothing but its own truth.

It was not for a couple days afterwards that Bard spoke with Tilda. She had asked for a bedtime story again for the first time in weeks, and he had happily obliged her. As he read the last line of the latest chapter in "The Giver" and closed the book with a quiet sense of finality, Tilda blinked up at him with sleepy eyes.

"Thanks, Da," she murmured.

He cupped her cheek, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "Tilda, can I ask you something?"

Her eyes opened a little wider, and she rubbed them with small hands. "What is it?"

Bard hesitated. "When did you know that the ghost was there for the first time?" he asked her.

Tilda pushed herself up on her pillows and chewed her lip thoughtfully. "I dunno. Soon after we got here. When I was looking for something, he was just there."

"What if I wanted to see the ghost?" Bard asked. "Or talk to him. What would I have to do?"

"Hmm." Tilda looked him up and down in a businesslike way. "Well, if he doesn't want you to see him then you can’t do anything. But if you just stop running around and _doing_ things so much, maybe he'll come to you."

"Doing things?" Bard repeated.    

Tilda nodded. "Sometimes I just sit quietly in an empty room for a long time, until I see him. He doesn't always want to talk, but other times he does." She glanced around and leaned in conspiratorially. "I think he gets lonely."

Bard couldn't help but smile. "Alright. I'll have to give that a try."

A small frown dipped between Tilda’s brows. "Why do you want to talk to the ghost, Da?"

Bard shrugged. "It seems rude not to, don't you think?" he said with a grin.

Tilda looked away with a pause, her head sunken into the pillow. The orange light of the lamp held them in a pool of light, but darkness nibbled at the corners of the room. When she spoke, her voice was small. "Please don't try and make him go away."

Bard looked at her with faint surprise. Her eyes were downcast, lips pouting. He reached up to tilt her chin up so she could see the reassurance in his eyes. "I won't. I promise."

"Pinky promise."

Bard held out his finger solemnly, looping it with Tilda's smaller one. "Pinky promise." He bopped her lightly on the nose with his little finger, earning a giggle from his daughter.  She settled back down onto the covers, her eyes trailing off into the corner of the room. "Goodnight, Da."

"Goodnight, sweetheart." He stood up and turned the light off, quietly shutting the door behind him. Before he walked away, he heard Tilda's voice whispering in the dark of her room. He paused, leaning towards the crack in the door to listen. "You should let him see you. He's really nice. I think you'll like him." A pause. "Okay. Goodnight."

Then there was silence. Bard walked back to his room feeling strange, his eyes travelling over the empty corners of the hallways as he went.

 

 

 

A few times after that Bard did as Tilda suggested, sitting in his room with the light off and waiting for something to happen. He’d waited for a long time for a voice to speak out of the darkness before resigning himself to sleep. There was no sign, no reply. After a while he began to think that the ghost simply didn’t want to speak to him.

The end titles of a television show dragged Bard back to the surface of consciousness in the dark of his living room. He sat up, blearily running a hand over his head. He had been intending to watch the late night news—evidently nothing exciting had happened. The heavy blanket over him was a sign that one of his children had found him and thought it best not to disturb him. Fumbling for the remote, he clicked the television off and left the final note hanging forlornly in the air.

The room was plunged into a half-darkness, lit from the bright moonlight through the windows outside. Bard sighed, but he didn't get up yet. He felt comfortable. There was something heavy and soft in the air, weighing him down and buoying him up like warm water. For a moment he closed his eyes, in danger of drifting off again.

"You are a very deep sleeper."

The voice sent a prickle down the back of Bard's neck. He did not turn to find the source. It was deep and rich, with an air of arrogance. Hearing it from his own couch in his own living room, it was difficult not to be afraid.

"I've been waiting for you to awaken for some time now." The voice came again, and this time Bard could not resist turning his head. The room remained as empty as ever in every sense but feeling.

"You’re Thranduil, aren’t you?” Bard asked shakily. The room remained silent—he got the feeling he had asked a stupid question. “I thought you couldn't speak to me," he said. It was hard for him to believe this was really happening. He supposed he could still be asleep, but he didn't think so. In fact, he hoped he wasn’t.

"It is difficult. Not impossible." There was no sign of anyone, no outline against the deep blue shadows.

"Where are you?" Bard whispered.

At once the air seemed to ripple on the other side of the couch, as if the light had suddenly realized it had forgotten to illuminate something. It was gone a moment later. "I am here."

Bard remembered the figure he'd seen at the window, how real it had seemed. "Can't I look at you?"

"Why?" The voice sounded equal parts irritated and amused at the idea.

"I don't know. It seems less strange than having a conversation with a disembodied voice."

There was a sound that could have been a sigh. The ripple in the air appeared again, but this time it remained—Bard picked out the outline of cheekbones, chin, cool blue eyes. "Is this to your satisfaction?"

For a moment, Bard simply stared. The apparition before him wore strange clothes, a vest over his white shirt with loose sleeves, a tie wound tightly around his neck. He sat with his legs crossed and his head slightly tilted, examining Bard with an appraising look.  Bard felt as if his skin were electrified, charged with static. He was brushing up against the impossible, and the impossible did not seem impressed with him.

"It's rude to stare."

Bard nearly laughed. "I'm sorry. This is all just really… creepy."

Thranduil raised an eyebrow. Even as the words left his mouth, the image in front of him seemed to shimmer, and then disappear. Bard's heart leapt. "Wait," he cried at the darkness. "I meant no offense.  I just… never thought that ghosts were real."

The voice came from nowhere in particular. "I am not real. Yet here I am all the same. I was in this house long before you were even born, and will remain so long after you die. Don't forget that."

"Tilda failed to mention that you were a bit dramatic," Bard said, hoping the lightness in his tone hid the tremble in his voice.

"And I had long since noted your unfortunate sense of sarcasm," Thranduil replied dryly. His outline appeared once again at the end of the couch, and Bard saw that a small smile had intruded on his features.

"You've been watching me?" Bard asked.

"Of course. This is my house, and I will move about it as I please. With all of you under foot in every room, it's impossible not to notice your habits."

"Technically it isn’t “your” house," Bard argued in spite of himself. "We live here too."

Thranduil looked away haughtily. "For now. They all leave, eventually."

Bard crossed his arms over his chest. "I have no intention of leaving."

Thranduil sighed. "And I could not force you to if I tried. It seems we are going to have to learn to coexist with one another. Whether we like it or not." As he spoke, Thranduil seemed to grow more and more imperceptible until there was little left but his voice. And then, even that was gone.

"Hang on," Bard protested. "I have questions."

"I will come to you again." Thranduil's voice was hardly there. "I have exerted myself too much already." A faint pause, in which Bard was almost certain Thranduil had gone. “One last thing,” the voice said. “The new paint in the bathroom is atrocious. Replace the old wallpaper at once.”

Bard opened his mouth for a quick retort, but he was suddenly overtaken by the realization Thranduil was gone. It settled over him as solidly as a blanket thrown over his head, the sudden absence of something he hadn’t realized had been there. He shook his head, feeling his heart beat in his chest, and fought down a small smile on his face. It seemed he would be sharing this space with a ghost. It seemed this house had no shortage of surprises.

A few days later he found himself looking at swatches of wallpaper, struggling to remember what the old bathroom wallpaper had looked like before he painted over it. You couldn’t be too careful, after all. He didn’t want to get on a ghost’s bad side.

 

 

 

From then on, things changed.

It was strange to move through his own house and wonder if someone was watching. Whenever he walked into a room he found his eyes darting to the corners, scanning the empty spaces for a form he might recognize. The rooms were all unoccupied, except for a lingering sense that they weren't. A couple times Bard had softly called Thranduil's name, trying to coax him out of hiding. But Bard remained for all intents and purposes alone, and so he went about his daily tasks trying not to think of the specter hanging over his shoulder.

Bard was changing into his sleeping clothes when he felt it. The room was lit only by the searing patch of moonlight in the center. As soon as Bard began to disrobe he felt an intruding sense of self-consciousness, despite being alone in the room. But of course, he had to stop thinking that way. Alone didn’t mean what it used to. Still, when no figure made itself presence in the room, he set to tugging on his shirt and kicking off his jeans, tugging his hair from its half-ponytail with restless fingers.

"Do you _never_ make your bed?"

Bard's head whipped to the side, finding the spot to his left empty. He fixed it with a faintly accusing stare. "Were you watching me change?"

The voice floated out of the air, laden with disinterest. "I was not paying much attention."

Bard’s eyes scanned the room, searching for that glint of cold eyes and pale hair. "Where are you?"

Movement caught his eye, and as if he had always been there, Thranduil appeared. Bard nearly started—he was reclining on the other side of Bard's bed, fully dressed down to his shoes. One leg was pulled up while the other stretched out, his arm looped casually over the raised knee. He looked as if he had been there for some time.

"What are you doing there?" Bard demanded.

Thranduil looked at him as if he had asked what he’d had for breakfast that morning. "I spend many of my nights here."

Both of Bard’s eyebrows shot up. "In my bed?"

Thranduil stared him down. "Technically, it is my bed."

Bard sighed, walking over to sit on the edge of the bed across from Thranduil. Where the moonlight pooled at his feet, the figure reclining on the bed was smudged by the shadows. It was odd, but what little strangeness he had felt at the idea of being in the same room as a ghost was already gone. Something about this felt natural in a way Bard couldn’t describe. "You can't claim ownership over everything in this house just because you've been here longer."

A faint smile curved Thranduil's lips. "Watch me."

Bard shook his head ruefully. "I never expected ghosts to be so arbitrary."

Thranduil was quiet for a long moment. They were close now, separated only by the stretch of blankets between them. He looked regal, even posed so casually. Bard's tangled sheets and dented pillows looked out of place beside him. His pale hair spilled over his shoulders, gleaming faintly in the moonlight. The expression on his face was impossible to read.

"Do you feel uncomfortable to know I have shared your bed?"

"Well, yes," Bard said eventually. "Do you actually need to sleep?"

"Not as you do. But there is some comfort in the habit of it. To stay awake all night, wandering the passageways alone… it does not lead to pleasant thoughts." 

Bard sighed. It did seem unfair to ban Thranduil from a bed he had presumably been sleeping in for decades. And after all, it had not bothered Bard in the months before. "I suppose it doesn't matter. It's not like I can feel you."

Thranduil stared at him, deadpan. "If it truly bothers you, you may sleep on the couch. I will not be offended."

Bard laughed in spite of himself. "Oh? You're too kind." He scooted further into the bed so that he and Thranduil were sitting side by side, propped on up on the headboard. It was odd to be so close to him and know that if he reached out, there would be nothing there. The last time he had lay in bed with someone, his wife had fallen asleep with a book on her chest and a pen hanging out of her mouth. The memory stretched an uncomfortable tightness in his throat. This was not the same. For as much as he might seem to exist, Thranduil was not real. Whatever strange habits he might have, they need not affect Bard at all.

"A couple of rules, then," Bard said, shaking off the dark thoughts. He began ticking off his fingers. "One: stay on your side of the bed. Two: no strange noises in the middle of the night when I'm liable to have a heart attack. Three," his eyes moved meaningfully to Thranduil's outlandish boots. "No shoes in the bed."

Thranduil shrugged. A moment later, his feet were bare. Bard stared at them in disbelief. "You can change your appearance?"

"Within reason. I cannot wear a different face or shape than one my body took."

Bard shook his head. "This is all so strange."

"If you like, I can make the boots appear again."

Bard laughed quietly. "No thank you. I think sleeping with your shoes on is the line I won't cross."

Thranduil watched him unfalteringly as Bard shoved back the covers and climbed into bed. Bard felt the weight of those eyes like a heat on his skin. "Do you think you could… make yourself invisible again? It's unsettling to see you just sitting there."

"Of course." A moment later, Thranduil vanished. Bard waited a moment later, as if he was expecting something to leap out at him. When the room remained resolutely quiet he rolled over, facing away from where he knew Thranduil must still be. "Are you staring at me?"

"No."

Bard sighed. He pulled the blanket up to his cheek and squeezed his eyes shut. There was no sound of breathing beside him, no warmth or rustle of sheets to suggest someone was near. He could sense Thranduil's presence on a deeper level than that. It struck Bard that the sensation of someone beside him hadn't been a dream for all those nights. At the time, it had felt comforting. Knowing that Thranduil was real, it sent a strange prickle down his spine.

And yet sleep came to him quickly, lulled by the faint feeling of someone else lying beside him.

 

 

 

It went on like that. Many nights would go by where Thranduil would not show himself. At times like these, Bard would usually make some inane comment to goad him into speech or form. It usually worked. Tilda had said Thranduil did not like talking, but Bard was discovering the opposite was true. As curt as his manners might be, the man seemed to enjoy their conversations. Or, at the very least, he did not actively avoid them. Bard began to find it strange to go to bed without announcing “Good night” to the empty room. It was even stranger not to get a reply.

Spring thickened into summer, and with it came the heat. The house was only too quick to provide a problem: the air conditioner broke on the third day temperatures reached over eighty, and resolutely stayed broken. The family slept with the windows thrown open when they could sleep at all. Bard had surrendered the last fan to Sigrid after he’d noted the bags under her eyes before school the morning before. The moisture in the air suggested an oncoming rain that simply refused to break. Every time Bard found himself drifting to sleep, the heat seemed to build and build until he was forced to shift positions, seeking a cooler part of the mattress. It was futile. Sleep wouldn’t come.

The sheets were caked around him in a sticky mass. He kicked them off, limbs still heavy with sleep, yet the air was just as oppressive. He lay as still as he could, the laboring click of the fan above him a poor reminder of what little good it was doing. Even in nothing but his boxer shorts, it felt as a thick, damp blanket was wrapped close around him.

With a groan, Bard dragged himself out of bed. The window was a dim square of light on the other side of the room—stumbling over, he sent the shade up with a tug, letting the moonlight stream into the room. The window itself gave him little trouble, and as he wrenched it open the cool, dry touch of night air on his bare skin brought instant relief. He could only open the window about a foot before it grew too stiff to move, but it was enough.

Sighing, Bard leaned forward and pressed his forehead to the cool glass. The shadow of the house stretched out in front of him, leaking down the hill towards the shimmering surface of the lake. The road wrapped around it in a gentle, possessive curve, but there were no cars travelling it and all the houses were dark with sleep. There was no one awake in sight.

"Beautiful, isn't it."

Bard did not turn at the sound of the voice from behind his shoulder. "It is."

"I've been looking out over these grounds for longer than the living can remember. Much changes here, but my fondness for the countryside stays the same."

Bard turned, the light shifting over his body so that half of him was in shadow. Thranduil was standing not two paces back, his eyes fixed out the window where Bard's had been. Though Bard was standing half in the light, Thranduil was wreathed in blue-dark shadows.

"I fear that one day they will tear it all down," Thranduil sighed. "It seems in my existence I am doomed to lose one simple pleasure after another."

"Surely it is not all loss," Bard said gently. Thranduil's eyes shifted to his. Something seemed to pass between them, a movement in his chest like a sudden breath of wind. The air from outside was still.

"Not all loss," Thranduil conceded at last. "But often it's the absences we feel the most."

Bard swallowed, nodding. "I am familiar with that."

 Thranduil took a small step closer, the light kindling his hair into solid moonbeams. His eyes were full of a terrible understanding.

"I heard you speaking to her. You must have loved her very much."

Bard tensed. "I did." It felt strange, and not in a good way, to know that someone had been listening in on his private conversations with his wife.

"What happened to her?"

Bard laughed tonelessly. "You don’t think about people getting into car accidents at three in the afternoon. It just doesn’t feel right, does it? Everything is too bright for that kind of thing.” He shook his head, fighting the cold dark thing that threatened to claw its way up his throat. “She was just going to pick up some eggs for dinner.”

Thranduil paused. "You must try not to be bitter. I have learned to accept a long time ago that all things happen for a reason."

If anyone else had said it to Bard he would have smiled stiffly and changed the subject. As it was, he merely shook his head. "I'm tired of those sentiments. I've heard enough people tell me that to last a lifetime."

Thranduil's eyes flashed. "There was no one to offer me such condolences. And I have existed for many lifetimes."

Bard ran a hand over his face. The old wounds were aching now, the half-healed stitches tugged at until they bled. He could never go long without feeling this way. Yet it never hurt any less. "I don't expect you to understand."

"Don't you? Do not presume to speak to me of death," Thranduil said, his voice turning icy. "Consider your wife lucky that her spirit did not linger on, to see the ones she loved pass into nothing before her eyes."

Bard's heart stilled in his chest. "The fire… there was no list of casualties."

"There was only one." Thranduil turned to him, and as the light struck his face it seemed contorted by flame. "My wife and child survived. They had another house built on this very spot, and lived there for a time—but then they left, and I was never to see them again. I remained, even as they lay on their deathbeds far from where I could ever reach. Be glad you could look upon the one you loved one last time before the earth closed over her face. Not all of us have had that privilege."

Bard stared at him. The frustration he had felt moments before had completely evaporated. The brief glimpse of fire and agony on Thranduil's face was gone—his skin was unblemished, yet translucent. Hardly there at all. Bard knew better than to offer empty condolences. Automatically his hand reached out to settle on Thranduil's shoulder—and passed straight through it with little more feeling than the stirring of dust motes. Thranduil watched it fall with a look of great weariness on his face.

"You need not console me," he said. "I have had many long years to come to terms with my fate."

"I suppose I have little comfort to offer you. I know that none ever worked on me."

A bitter smile twisted Thranduil's lips. "When a loved one dies, we mourn twice-over: once for them, and once for ourselves. There is an emptiness in both our hearts where love used to live, I think." Thranduil's hand extended, long and pale in the moonlight, to hover over Bard's chest, where he would have felt his heartbeat. He did not try to press it to the skin—they both knew that was futile. If Bard had closed his eyes, he might have felt a pull there, the straining of two magnets brought close together, but not close enough. Thranduil's eyes were locked in his, pale blue and entrancing. Bard found himself wishing, suddenly, irrationally, that the man in front of him was solid. What he would do then, he did not know—he knew only that he wanted it very much.

"You are lucky that you have your children," Thranduil said, letting his hand fall, his eyes turn away. "It is difficult to be alone."

"You are not alone," Bard said quietly. "At least, you don't have to be."

Thranduil turned his eyes back to Bard's. "And you would presume to keep me company?"

Suddenly Bard felt as if he had lost the high ground. "If you like," he murmured.

It could have been a trick of the light. But it seemed that for a moment Thranduil's eyes trailed down Bard's body, taking in the bare skin on his chest still shining with a sheen of sweat. Bard felt suddenly aware of how little clothing he was wearing—yet he made no move to cover himself.

And then, just as quickly, Thranduil was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

The kitchen was warm, filled with the smell of cooking onions and the sound of scurrying feet as Bard prepared dinner. Tilda had really taken to the woman from the moment they met, and this time it was Bard’s job to try and prepare something non-toxic and filling for Hilda and her husband to have at dinner. With three helpers as liable to set something on fire as to stop it from burning, that was easier said than done.

“Sigrid, will you put the muffins in the oven?” Bard called over the sizzling of the pan.

“Why is it making that sound, Da?” Tilda asked.

“That means it’s cooking, dear. Bain, no nibbling,” Bard warned as his son started picking at a hamburger bun. “Go get the salad started. Tilda, can you set the table?”

Bain rolled his eyes but did as he was told; Tilda bounced off on his heels, sliding a pile of plates from the counter and tottering off under their weight. Bard allowed himself a short breath of relief.

“The onions are about to start burning.” The voice was quiet in his ear, enough to make him jump in spite of himself—when he glanced to the side there was nothing there. Perhaps he should be used to that by now. Sure enough, when he turned around the frying pan was smoking gently, and as he scrambled to turn the onions over they were just barely saved. He could just imagine the little smirk that would be darting across Thranduil’s face right about now.

“Thanks,” Bard said under his breath.

“What, Da?” Sigrid called from across the room.

“Just talking to myself, Sig,” Bard replied quickly. “How’s the baking?”

“It’ll be done in twenty minutes. Can I go change my clothes now?”

She stood framed in the doorway, wiping her hands down on a towel. Looking at her then, Bard was stricken with a sudden, deep-seated feeling of contentment that he couldn’t really explain. A feeling that at this moment, everything was as it should be. His smile ached at the corners. “Sure thing. Just be down in ten.”

Sigrid nodded with a smile and hurried off through the house, her footsteps thumping up the stairs and creaking across the second floor to her room. Bard set to flipping the hamburgers, aware of the presence watching him even now.

 “I like this house,” he said offhandedly, watching the oil in the pan dance. “There’s something about it. Something kind.”

“I watched it being built,” Thranduil replied. Out of the corner of his eye Bard could see him leaning on the counter. “I’m curious. What brought you here?”

Bard shrugged. “Running away from memories, I suppose. You know better than most how houses tend to soak them up, the good and the bad. Not all ghosts are as pleasant company as you are.” Bard stared hard at the frying pan in front of him. “Sometimes they just linger on, and there’s nothing you can do about them.”

He didn’t need to look a Thranduil to imagine the look on his face. “I suppose you weren’t expecting to go from one ghost straight to another.”

With a chuckle, Bard bobbed his head. He prodded at the burgers in the pan, feeling the heat on his face. “This ghost isn’t so bad.”

“Turn that piece of meat, it’s already done.”

Bard did as he was told with a good-natured smile. “You’re a bit bossy, you know.”

“Perhaps you’re simply bad at taking direction.”

As soon as Bard’s eyes shifted to Thranduil, his outline flickered in the lights of the kitchen. In the corner of his eyes Thranduil was as real and solid as someone alive. Now he was little more than a faint splotch of grey. Bard pointed the spatula in his direction, raising an eyebrow. “Hey. No sniping at the chef. You’ll damage my concentration.”

“No difficult feat, I’m sure.”

Bard snorted. The silence of the kitchen filled with the quiet crackle of cooking food, the ticking of the oven. He could hear Tilda and Bain bickering from the dining room. “You never explained the whole magpie thing,” Bard said after a moment. When Thranduil raised an eyebrow, he clarified. “Stealing little pieces of jewelry. Not to mention leaving things lying around.”

“I suppose I get bored,” Thranduil said offhandedly. “Objects I can interact with, with enough strength of will. Anything with a soul is beyond my reach. Moving things provides a challenge, a way to touch the world in some way and remind myself that I exist. When I was alive, I used to collect little trinkets for my family wherever I found them. The habit stuck.”

It was not difficult to hear the pain in Thranduil’s voice as he spoke of his family, tucked away under an apparent lack of emotion. He thought back on what Thranduil had said—he had seen this house built, and been bound to this land for much longer than that. What would it be like, to be trapped on this one patch of earth for what must have been centuries? To watch these hallways unfold and the lives spilling out into them, never able to reach out and touch them? It was remarkable that Thranduil hadn’t gone mad, or withered into a bitter husk. There must be incredible strength behind those eyes. Bard wished he could look at them now.

“Da, Da, Da, Bain tried to shove a carrot stick in my ear!” Tilda scampered into the room and nearly crashed into the back of Bard’s legs.

He steadied her with his free hand, adjusting the stovetop’s heat with the other. “Careful, darling. We want the food to stay in the pans, if at all possible.”

Out of the corner of his eyes he could see Thranduil smile as he faded away. Tilda’s eyes slid over to where he had been standing a moment later, her brow furrowed. “Were you talking to the ghost?”

Bard hid a smile as he ruffled Tilda’s hair, offered her the spatula to dodge the question. “Do you want to try stirring the onions?” He pulled up a chair so she could see what she was doing, keeping a hand on the middle of her back to steady her. Tilda watched the browning vegetables form little mounds as she pushed them around the pan, her eyes bright.

“I think the ghost likes you,” she said after a moment.

Bard glanced at her in surprise, an odd squirming starting up in his stomach. “Why do you say that?”

Tilda looked at him with a wide smile, one which suggested much more than Bard could decipher. “I just do. I think he really likes you.”

Bard smiled back, trying to ignore the flood of mild embarrassment at the thought of Thranduil watching this exchange. At the same time he couldn’t ignore the way something in his chest seemed to uncurl, wondering what Thranduil would think of his daughter’s proclamations. “Well. I’m glad to hear it.”

The doorbell interrupted their conversation. Bard lifted Tilda down from the stove, taking the spatula from her and turning off the burners. “Go tell your brother our guests are here,” he said, patting her on the back as she scurried off. He shot one last glance at the counter where Thranduil had been, a faint smile on his face.

 

 

 

It seemed that the house was growing, spreading and opening like a rosebush. It rose up around him, vines entwining in a metal fence, twisting pieces of itself into him and bursting into bloom. He was as much a part of this place as it was of him. His days were full of light, the quiet touch of joy. When cooking, he would sometimes reach for a measuring cup only to find it just beside him, already full of whatever ingredient he needed. He would often leave books around the house, turning the pages as he passed by on his chores so that Thranduil could read them. He would stay up late into the night talking, filling the empty spaces in the room with their voices.

The nights were no longer like empty boats that he drifted by one after another. He lay in bed and the stillness wasn’t like death, and the silence wasn’t unbreakable. When he awoke in the middle of the night it wasn’t with something hard lodged in the back of his throat. The house held him like a pair of hands, and he wasn’t afraid.  

On one such night, sleep trailed away from him and left him halfway back to awareness. He could have simply drifted back down again, but something made him pull himself away from the soft darkness in the back of his mind. When Bard opened his eyes, he found himself staring at the empty side of the bed. Yet he knew it wasn't empty—Thranduil was there, even if he couldn't see him. Bard yawned, his fingers curling under the pillow. "Were you watching me sleep again?"

A pause. Then, "Yes."

"Why?"

"Because you look strange." Thranduil's voice sounded odd, as if he were choosing his words very carefully.

Bard snorted. "Well, it's not like I can help it. Being unconscious, and all."

"I did not intend that as an insult." There was a pause. "In sleep, your face has a stillness to it I have yet to see while you are awake. You seem…weightless, perhaps."

Bard raised an eyebrow. "I think I might have been drooling a little."

"Minimally. It was a very artistic amount of drool."

Bard chuckled, heard a resulting sound from close beside him. After a moment, Thranduil said "If you wish, I can leave you to sleep."

"No, no," Bard said, biting back another yawn. "I like having you around."

"Not so long ago you said I was… 'creepy'."

"I'm allowed a change in opinion."

Bard could imagine the smile that would spread over Thranduil's face at that. He closed his eyes, but he did not fall asleep. After a long while Thranduil's voice came to him again.

"You don't talk to your wife anymore." From the caution in his voice, Bard knew Thranduil was wary of the ground he was treading. Bard had never been one to talk about it. But this time, it didn’t feel so wrong.

Bard stared up at the ceiling in the dark, his fingers laced behind his head. If he was to sit up he might see Thranduil sitting on the edge of the bed without making a dent in the covers, or pacing soundlessly across the floorboards. Or maybe he would see nothing at all. Silence unwound itself around them in ponderous loops before Bard finally spoke.

"No, I guess I don't." His eyes were blank.

"Why don't you?"

Bard sighed. "I suppose I don't feel the need to now." He hesitated. "It never really made me feel better. It was something that I had to do. To hold on." A hard lump constricted his throat. "Even though I knew there was nothing left to hold on to. She's gone." Saying the words didn’t hurt like they used to, like he’d thought they always would. As he spoke it seemed a weight fluttered off his chest, like he could breathe a little easier.

"And yet you still miss her."

"Of course I do. I always will. But I know she would want me to move on, to live my life and be happy even without her." He laughed bitterly. "Easier said than done."

"I would have wanted the same," Thranduil said quietly. "For my own wife to be happy, even after I was gone. I can only hope that… that she managed to find that…" He broke off.

Bard rolled over, looked at the dark space on the other side of the bed where Thranduil would be sitting. “I don’t know if we can ever be happy in the same way, after losing someone that way. But whatever kind of contentment is left for us, I’m sure your wife found it.”

Thranduil was quiet for a long time. “Thank you,” he said in a voice no louder than the sighing of the floorboards. His words were like gentle fingers touching Bard’s eyelids, tracking the flutter of his lashes. His eyes slid closed almost on their own, and for a while he simply drifted, neither sleeping nor awake, feeling the quiet weight of Thranduil beside him.

"What are you thinking about?"                   

As Bard was lying on his side, the voice came from directly in front of him. He smiled softly. "I'm imagining what you would look like right now."

"Do you want me to show myself?"

Bard shook his head, his cheek rubbing blearily against his pillow. "Mm-mm. I can picture you just fine. As stiff and formal as you always are—sitting up against the headboard, legs crossed, hands clasped in your lap. If you kept that kind of posture in life it's a miracle you didn't die of back problems."

There was a long pause. Slowly, Thranduil's form began to materialize. It gathered on the blankets in front of Bard's eyes like a low-lying fog, spreading into the shape of limbs, a nose, the sweep of his hair. Bard took in a sharp, quiet breath. Thranduil was not sitting against the headboard. His face was even with Bard's on the pillow opposite, his hair spilled out on the pillow. His jacket had disappeared along with his shoes, leaving the jut of his shoulders rounded, less severe. Everything about him looked softer somehow, shadowed in orange and browns by the lamp behind him. His eyes were half-open, and even though Bard knew he did not sleep, he looked ready to drift off beside him.

"Well, that's unexpected," Bard said quietly.

"Better or worse?" Thranduil murmured. Bard's eyes flickered to the movement of his lips.

Bard nodded, the barest movement. "Better."

Thranduil smiled. He looked so solid, so real. He could _feel_ him, the weight of him in the air, on the covers, his warmth and presence. The temptation to reach out was nearly overwhelming. Bard's hand was cupped under his pillow. Almost on its own accord, the hand began sliding across the narrow space between them, palm-up, as gentle as the knuckles stroking a horse's nose. Thranduil's eyes flicked down to track it, and immediately he began to pull away. Bard stopped, feeling an ache in his chest as Thranduil settled back down, his eyes tired. But when he looked up at Bard once again there was a sense of determination there. "Lay your hand down palm-up."

Bard did as he was told, slowly uncurling his fingers until their backs were resting on the sheets between them. After a moment, Thranduil extended his own hand, letting it hover ever so slightly over Bard's. He lowered it until for all appearances their hands were pressed together, despite Thranduil's touch holding no more weight than a beam of winter sunlight. Bard stared at them, transfixed, wishing he could lace his fingers in Thranduil's and drag his thumb over the back of Thranduil's hand.

"I'm sorry," Thranduil murmured.

Bard looked up in surprise. "For what?"

Thranduil shrugged ever so slightly. "Not being real."

Bard stared at him. Thranduil was looking at their hands rather than meeting Bard's eyes. Bard felt a sudden swell of something in his chest, heat and longing, the drive to take that pain out of Thranduil's eyes and cast it away into nothing.

With a quiet sigh, Thranduil seemed to fade, his hand growing translucent over Bard’s. "In all the years I've walked these halls, I've come to know loneliness better than I know myself. I hardly remember anything else."

Bard waited for him to continue, a twinge of pain striking at his heart. “Why can’t you leave?” he asked quietly.

“At first it was my family,” Thranduil said softly. “I could not leave them. Then when they left me, I lingered on because I thought they might return. After a while, I forgot how to move on.” With every word he grew slightly fainter, until there was nothing there at all. When he spoke again, Bard could not miss the bitterness in his voice. "I can’t remember what it feels like to be at peace, to share in someone’s companionship. I can't recall what it's like to touch, or be touched."

Bard reached across the bed to where the voice was coming from, but his hand found only smooth, empty sheets.

"I wish I could touch you." The sentence surprised even himself, yet the words felt as natural as breathing. It was the simple truth.

The silence stretched out beside him for a long time, so long Bard thought Thranduil had gone. But then he spoke. "What would you do if you could?"

There was an odd note in Thranduil's voice, something as wary as a foot testing thin ice. Bard wished he could see his face. "Well, I would start by shaking your hand."

He heard Thranduil's quiet laugh. "A handshake? How very formal. I would at least hope for an embrace."

Bard chuckled. "That was next on the list. No need to get impatient. I would pull you close until I was sure you were real. Until you were sure, too."

"I would like that." Thranduil paused. "What would you do next?"

Bard felt a tremor run through his body at the sound of Thranduil's voice. At what he might be implying. "I would touch your hair. See if it is truly as soft as it looks." He could imagine it now, the way it would fall and shift under his fingers, the warmth it would hold close to Thranduil's scalp. He thought of how it would feel to tangle that hair into his fist, and for once he didn't stop himself. His heart was beating fast in his chest as he let the words spill out, words he didn’t know he had inside of him. "I would touch your face. Feel the skin under your eyes, trace the curve of your ear. I'd follow your pulse down your neck, to the hollow of your throat. I would—" he faltered. He knew what he would do next, but the words stopped themselves in his throat. The room suddenly felt very wide, and very empty, his voice hanging alone and exposed. The ceiling, painted with moonlight, was a blank canvas above him. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't—"

"I would kiss you.”

Thranduil's voice was soft, but something lingered beneath the surface that sent a jolt low in Bard's stomach. He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. "I would kiss you," Thranduil repeated, and Bard could hear the sudden smile in his voice, as if he had surprised even himself. "From your forehead, to your eyelids, to the corners of your mouth… and then your lips." It seemed that as Thranduil spoke, it was really happening. He could feel the softness of Thranduil's mouth, taste his lips, feel the teeth and tongue moving beneath them. “If you only knew how many times I’ve thought of taking your lips, Bard…”

A breath of air escaped Bard’s lips, sharp and sweet. He heard Thranduil’s light laughter as faint as a feather. “I would have you remove your shirt so I could follow your bones down your body, your scars, your freckles… Do you want that?”

“Yes,” Bard breathed, his voice rough as he stared up into nothing and beyond it, as he watched Thranduil doing the things he promised.

“Close your eyes, Bard.”

Bard did as he was told, his fingers curling on the sheets. There was nothing between him and Thranduil now—he was lying right beside him, could feel the planes of his chest and the flutter of his eyelashes and the warmth behind his knees. Thranduil’s voice filled him to every corner now, slow and rich and enough to make Bard’s skin prickle with the edge of desire behind it.

When Bard stripped his shirt off it was Thranduil’s fingernails that scraped his skin, the pads of his fingers running over Bard’s hipbones while Thranduil told him what to do, Thranduil’s hand that curled around him and sent dry shivers up his spine like sparks into soft hay. When he came apart it was Thranduil’s soft words waiting for him, tracing the shivers that ran over his skin. Thranduil’s voice, as gentle as a hand smoothed across his forehead, whispering for him to fall asleep.

He sunk down into it willingly, and into something deeper; sleep took him and pulled him to pieces with gentle fingers, and it seemed for a moment he and Thranduil were both nothing, drifting without form, nothing more than the impression of a smile in the air where it had hung, a flitting of moonlight in the curtains.


	4. Chapter 4

Days marched on, as they always had done and would always continue to do. Sometimes they carried something with them, a smile or a feeling that started once and never went away, the lilies in the garden spreading their orange tongues with every morning.

The sun rose and the sun set and the house settled itself into a deeper summer, shifting on its foundations, breathing deep green breaths. The chipped paint on the fence stayed chipped, but gained a hedge of tomato vines. The children began a garden beside it, potatoes and carrots and beans, their little leaves coming up weak but with the promise of growing stronger. The windows of the house grew warm with sunlight that sauntered through, curling on the floor like a lazy cat. When they were open, the smell of grass and flowers and water would drift through. Bard was not a superstitious man. He still believed that this was the happiest place he had ever been.

“I love you, you know.”

Bard sat on the ground, his back to a tree near the lake, eyes closed as the sun shined on him. Thranduil was a faint stirring in the grass beside him, a different touch of the breeze. When Bard said the words it was without any self-consciousness or fear, because he was happy and this was right, and it was time to take stock of the facts.

“I have for a while,” he continued. “I expect I will for quite a while longer.”

The air was full of the hiss of wind, the rippling of water and leaves. “Are you sure?” Thranduil’s voice was steady, but careful. He spoke as if he were holding something delicate in his hands, as if the slightest tremor could send it tumbling away.

When Bard opened his eyes Thranduil was beside him in a patch of shade, faint where the sunlight touched him. Bard didn’t need to see him to know he was there—his presence burned like heat, and Bard could feel it radiating as steady and strong as the glow of a beacon. Looking at him now, Bard felt a swell of something wild and joyful that threatened to burst out of his skin and tear around the grass like a whirlwind. He felt it leaking from his eyes, the corners of his mouth as he smiled. “You don’t need to say anything. I just wanted you to know.”

Thranduil stared at him solemnly, his fingers laced in the cool, damp grass. After a while he looked away. “I have felt your presence in my life before I so much as saw your face,” he said at last, in a tone so faint Bard felt it more than he heard it. “Or perhaps it was absence I felt—yes, I think that was it. An absence that disappeared day by day, the more I came to know you. I did not think there was anything left for me here, that I—” Thranduil broke off, his image flickering. “Thank you,” he said at last. 

Bard tucked Thranduil’s words into his chest like folded pieces of paper. As far as responses to declaration of love went, “thank you” was not exactly the most romantic. But it was entirely Thranduil’s, and Bard cherished that. He already knew the sentiment behind it. He could feel it every time he brushed the wooden threshold of a door, or saw the motes of dust dancing in a beam of light. The house was brimming with love. He could feel it even now.

“Come on,” Bard said, climbing to his feet and brushing the green stains from his palm. “Let’s walk beside the lake. You can tell me about the boat you had.”

“I would have thought you’d be tired of hearing of it,” Thranduil observed, dissipating as soon as he stepped into the sunlight.

“Don’t pretend like you don’t want to talk about it.”

He heard Thranduil’s faint chuckle. The sunlight was warm, the grass soft under his feet as he walked. Sunlight rippled off the lake beside him as he walked with Thranduil in step with him, making no imprint on the mud, his voice mingling with the hush of the wind. A hawk wheeled and dove in the sky above them on a wind Bard couldn’t feel. A summer storm was heading there way, but for now the air was quiet. As he watched, the hawk plunged down under a short gust of wind, skimmed along the surface of the water, and plucked a silver sliver of a fish from the surface of the water.

 

 

 

Bard came home before the children arrived from school, a bag of groceries in his hand. He walked with a light step to the house, tossing his keys on the waiting table as he made his way to the kitchen. His eyes slid around corners expecting to see a familiar shape outlined in the shadows between the windows, smiling that familiar smile. Each patch of blue darkness turned up empty. Bard’s smile faded only slightly.

“Thranduil,” he called, setting the brown paper back onto the counter with a crinkle. “I’m back.”

Silence replied. The kitchen looked colder, sharper than Bard could remember it. As if it had brushed up against a harsher reality and it still clung to the edges of the counters. Bard tried to shake the feeling of absence as he unloaded the vegetables into the refrigerator, the pasta into the cupboards.

“I was going to make risotto tonight,” he said to the empty room, his voice more uncertain than it had been in a long time. “Any suggestions?”

When there was still no reply, Bard paused. There was no hiss of wind from outside, no faint creak of woods. The house was quieter than Bard could remember hearing. A faint thrill of nervousness battered around his chest at the thoughts which followed that one. “Thranduil?” he called, walking from the kitchen to the dining room to the stairway, finding everything exactly how he had left it. Something was missing, something so fundamental he couldn’t even place it. The house had changed. It was emptier now.

He went from room to room calling Thranduil’s name, the fear nestling deeper into his stomach and growing until the children got home. He had to smile for them then, and get started on dinner without the familiar presence hanging over his shoulder and the occasional haughty suggestion about how much salt to use whispered in his ear. Whether the dinner tasted like ash because of his lack of assistance or the nervousness weighing Bard’s tongue down, he couldn’t be sure. A pall hung over the dining room until they all retired to their rooms, Bard with his heart beating erratically in his chest. Thranduil had always appeared when he’d called before. Something had to be wrong.

When he closed the door and turned around, Thranduil was standing by the window. At once the knot that had been tying and untying itself in Bard’s chest all day eased, then became a fuse.

“Where have you been?” Bard asked, fighting down the edge of anger and fear in his voice. “I was looking for you around the house all day.”

Thranduil did not turn around. His hands were clasped loosely behind his back. “I was merely keeping to myself,” he replied offhandedly.

Bard sat on the bed with a sigh. “When someone is calling for you and you don’t respond, we don’t call that ‘keeping to yourself’. We call that the silent treatment.”

“Shall I simply appear whenever you call, then?” Thranduil snapped, turning around sharply. “Go minute by minute waiting for your attention?”

Something cold twisted in the pit of Bard’s stomach. “You know that’s not what I meant.” When Thranduil didn’t reply, he slowly rose to his feet. “Thranduil. What’s wrong.”

Thranduil shook his head. He looked as if he wanted to say something—went so far as to open his mouth. But no sound came out, and when his lips closed again they were tighter than before. A small smile crossed his face all the same. “I am sorry,” he said. “I did not mean to be curt.”

“That’s alright,” Bard said. He could feel them moving away from something, knowing it was important but unable to call it back. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Thranduil stepped forward, gestured for Bard to sit on the bed beside him. “Later,” he said with a fondness that mixed with something bitter in his eyes. As Bard began to protest, he held up a finger. “Please. For tonight, can we just talk as we always do?”

Bard could not deny the soft pleading in Thranduil’s eyes. He broke into a quiet smile, his shoulders relaxing. “Alright,” he breathed, knowing it was a concession and for once not caring. He couldn’t ignore the way Thranduil’s eyes flickered away when they met his own, or the way his long fingers stayed resting on his knees, never moving. He knew whatever was on Thranduil’s mind would come to light eventually. But as he lay in bed with the lights off that night, he couldn’t be sure whether the faint presence he felt nearby was really there, or just his imagination.

 

 

 

The absent days grew longer, and more plentiful.

Sometimes Thranduil would not appear until the next morning, when Bard would roll over to find him watching from the patches of shadow the sun hadn’t reached. They would speak a few words, Bard’s worried and Thranduil’s curt, until daylight had marched straight up to the wall and Thranduil disappeared once again.

The house felt still, as if it were holding its breath. Or as if it had simply stopped breathing. The heat which had enveloped the house was beginning to feel stifling.

Bard had been lying awake in bed for hours, but he hadn’t tried to sleep. When he heard the floorboards begin to creak in that familiar, comforting way, he slid his feet out of bed and followed it down the stairs. Thranduil was waiting at the window, the first window Bard had ever seen him at. The memory made something twist in Bard’s stomach, stopped the words behind Bard’s teeth. He stood in silence, watching Thranduil stare out the window.

“The moon looks like it fell down into the lake.” It wasn’t the sentence Bard might have expected. It did little to ease the tension in his chest, but he smiled and stepped forward all the same. The full moon glimmered on the surface of the water, which was smooth and still without a breath of wind. It was as round and pale as a dinner plate, hanging ethereal and trembling on the lake’s surface.

“It’s beautiful,” Bard said, because he was not sure what else there was to say.

“Yes,” Thranduil agreed bitterly. “Yet not real.” Bard’s heart sank as Thranduil turned to him, a faint smile on his lips that came nowhere near his eyes. “You understand, don’t you Bard? That's all I am at heart. A trick of the light."

"Hey," Bard said, stepping forward before he could stop himself. "Not to me. You're more than that."

"Am I?" Thranduil's eyes were hard with pain. At once his hand reached out, flew to Bard's cheek and passed straight through it with no feeling at all. Bard flinched away, the reminder a sore one. "You are real, flesh and bone and marrow. Part of a world I no longer belong to, and can never touch again."

Bard shook his head, his smile desperate. "Now you're just being melodramatic."

“Am I?” Thranduil’s eyes flashed as his hand fell to his side. “You will never be able to embrace me, Bard. If something should happen to you, some injury when there is no one else around, I will not be able to call for help or even tend to your wounds. I cannot eat with you, keep you warm at night, take you out for an evening’s diversion.” He stepped forward. “And if you should ever desire to leave this house, I will not be able to follow you.”

“Why would I leave?” Bard argued. “I knew from the moment we moved here that I wanted to stay here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“You say that now, but life changes. Perhaps you will find different employment, perhaps you will meet someone else—“

“Meet someone—?! Thranduil, is this about you being jealous?”

“No!” Thranduil snapped. “This is about me wanting better for you than I can offer. What kind of life could you have with me? What lasting joy could I bring you?” His voice had grown desperate at the end, bitter and sharp with pain.

Bard found the words he wanted to say catching in his throat as Thranduil looked away, the moonlight shining through his face and illuminating pits of desolation where the fire had done its work. Even now Bard felt the frustration that he could not cup that cheek, couldn’t make Thranduil meet his gaze and see the devotion there. “Doesn’t what I want matter at all? What if I don’t want something else?”

Thranduil turned away and walked to the window. “You should.”

“Well, I don’t.” Bard stepped up to him again. “Listen to me: this is enough. Alright?”

“No, it’s not alright,” Thranduil said. “I’m ‘enough’, Bard? Is that supposed to console me?”

Bard held up his hands as if he could ward Thranduil’s words away. “You know that’s not what I meant.”  

Thranduil turned to him, and Bard was shocked at the anguished expression on his face. In spite of the sadness, he smiled. “Go out, be around the living, try with them once again. Find someone who can grow old with you, and share in your pains and travels. I will simply fade away, be no more than the dust in a pane of moonlight, a flicker on the lake. In time, you will forget I was ever here, and you can build happiness with someone else.”

Bard shook his head. “I’m not going to do that.”

Thranduil closed his eyes. “Then if you will not move on, I will have to do it for you. I have gone decades watching lives unfold around me.” There was no emotion in his voice. "I can simply make myself disappear. I will not trouble you again."  When he opened them again they were full of new, bitter purpose. “Do not look for me any longer,” he said. A moment later, Bard was alone.

“Thranduil?” Bard’s heart beat fast in his chest as he scanned the room, seeing nothing but empty shadows. “I know you’re still here,” he called, his voice loud and hollow. “This isn’t fair. Come out where I can see you again.” Nothing moved. “Thranduil.” Bard fought down the swell of terror in his chest. “Fine!” he cried. “Just disappear, refuse to face your problems. But we’re going to have to talk about this eventually, Thranduil, and I’m not going anywhere.”

He slammed the window shut and yanked the curtains further open, letting the moonlight sear into every surface and turn the shadows scarce and black. When he lay in bed staring blankly ahead of him that night, his eyes could not search the room, couldn’t scan for those cold eyes he knew were watching him even now. He closed his eyes, forced himself to sleep, and ignored how the house gaped empty around him.

 

 

 

At first, Bard refused to speak.

He wouldn’t talk to the shadows in the corners of every room, though he couldn’t stop his eyes from darting there expectantly. He would look away just as quickly, setting his jaw, and focus on going through life in an empty house. Thranduil could not stay away forever. He just couldn’t.

And then, when a week had gone by without a sign, Bard began to experience true panic. He wandered the house whenever the children weren’t home, reasoning with the bookshelves and lamp posts and the curling edges of the wallpaper, trying to coax out or antagonize a familiar quirk of the eyebrow, a well-known chuckle. There was nothing. Or worse—there was the presence of something that would not meet his gaze that turned away from him just as he was reaching out.

“Da, have you seen the ghost lately?” Tilda sat across from him at the table, her siblings eating quietly on either side. They were old enough to know something was wrong, and perhaps they were wise enough not to ask. But when Bard looked into Tilda’s wide, expectant eyes, he felt something crumple inside of him.

He put on a brave smile, looking away as quickly as possible. “You know, I haven’t.”

“I don’t know where he’s gone,” Tilda mused. “I used to see him all the time. Then he just disappeared.”

“I guess that just happens sometimes,” Bard said distantly. He swallowed the lump in his throat like a fist of broken glass.

After that he started taking long walks, down the road and into town, smiling when he saw people he knew, finding excuses not to come home. Then he refused to leave the house at all, unless he absolutely needed to. He knew Thranduil was here, knew he would always be here. But something had gone out of the air, a warmth that drained away and left Bard feeling numb. He felt as if he’d been deprived of one if his senses, and the world was a different place.

After three weeks he began to go over details, the sound of Thranduil’s voice, how he had looked when standing in half-shadow, the movement of his lips as he spoke. Bard wasn’t sure whether he was afraid he’d forget them, or afraid they’d never happened at all. He was afraid. That was all he knew.

After week four, the talks began.

It had been a long time since it had been like this, lying in bed with his eyes to the ceiling, seeing nothing there and knowing with a heavier sense of the word that he was alone. He’d almost forgotten what it was like to be alone. He’d almost forgotten how to live this way. But he’d had years of practice before coming to this house. His body had returned to the old patterns, wearing the emptiness in the air around him like a familiar suit, creased and worn. He’d done this so many times he had lost count, his hands behind his head, pain growing out of his heart like the stalk of a plant.

It felt like it had the first time, all those years ago when he’d seen her face so pale against the black of the wood and the red of the velvet inside, seen her face and known that now his words would always go unanswered. At the same time it felt nothing like it had, because this was Thranduil, this was _different_ , and Bard had spoken to the dead for so many years he’d stopped expecting a reply, and Thranduil had shown him there was more than dust and the smell of new paint and staring at the ceiling wondering who might be out there.

“I’m not sure if you’re listening,” Bard whispered to the empty room. “I’m not sure if you can even hear me. If you’re even still here. I can’t… feel you anymore. Maybe you really did go away.” Bard squeezed his eyes shut. “You know, you’re making me really paranoid that I hallucinated this whole thing. That I just convinced myself you were real somehow. But I know I didn’t. You know why?” The ceiling stared back at him impassively. “Because I knew I couldn’t have found that kind of happiness in myself. Not anymore. _You_ gave me that. And that’s how I know that you might be listening to me now. So I’m going to keep talking.”

Bard rolled over onto his side. The bed was an open expanse in front of him, a plain spilling out below the window with its pale curtains. The light on the bedside table was on, because Bard had learned that empty shadows were all the more painful. He stretched his hand out to the blanket beside him and found it cold and smooth. “You were real,” he whispered again. “I felt it.”

His mouth contorted, his eyes squeezed shut. He could feel something rising up inside of him, sharp and keening and ready to break. “I’ve already said just about everything I can think of to get you to come back,” he said, the words spilling out fast now. “So I’m sorry if I’m repeating myself. But I just want you to know—even if you never talk to me again—that it’s okay. I forgive you. And I hope you know that you made me happy—so very happy—” He broke off, pressing a hand over his eyes and feeling the wetness under his palm. “And I’ll always remember that, and I’ll remember you as the person who gave that to me, who could be that for me. And I didn’t want to lose you too, but I guess if it had to happen—if you had to go—then it’s okay. Because it was worth it while we had it.”

Bard’s breath came in short, hitched bursts, squeezed out between words that wouldn’t stop if he had wanted them to. He couldn’t remember the last time he had cried. He hadn’t thought himself capable. “I just didn’t want to lose you too,” he said again, and then another time, repeating it over and over like a prayer or an echo, fading into nothing. His sobs ripped through the air, hideous and unrecognizable. He buried his face into both his hands and simply let them come.

“Please don’t.”

The words were so faint Bard hardly heard them, but they were enough to make him sit bolt upright in bed, his bleary eyes darting around the room. And when he saw that familiar shape at the window, back nearly pressed against it, eyes desperate and agonized, Bard couldn’t let himself feel anything at all.

“Thranduil?” he cried in a voice that broke, his hands frantically swiping the tears off his cheeks as he blinked the rest away. His legs were halfway off the bed, as if he could get up cross the distance between them, as if that distance could be crossed at all. He forced himself to stay still, his breath still coming hard in his chest.

“Do you see?” Thranduil said, and Bard saw the thin lines of agony around his eyes and mouth; his face bore the sorrow with the ease of practice. He extended a hand towards Bard and then let it fall by his side helplessly. “I cannot wipe your tears.”

“They wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you being such an idiot,” Bard said with a laugh that threatened to turn into something more painful. His body shook with the tension of staying still, with the knowledge that in a moment Thranduil could disappear again forever.

Thranduil shook his head. He looked like a cornered animal, his leg in a trap. But what was closing in on him Bard could not be certain. “I thought I was stronger,” he whispered. “I thought I could stay away.”

Bard felt a cold heart twist over his heart. “Just tell me to leave,” he said, his voice shockingly even as he rose to his feet. “I’ll go. I promise you that. If you truly don’t want me here… I’ll move back out of this house, remove the temptation.”

Thranduil stared at him, saying nothing.

“All you have to do is tell me,” Bard said, taking another step closer, marveling at how his voice could sound so steady even as he felt like he was falling apart inside, even as he knew his eyes were still red. “Just tell me what you want me to do. But I already know what I want. And I’m not afraid anymore.”

If he hadn’t studied Thranduil’s face, turning it over in his mind even when he couldn’t see it, he might have thought there was no emotion there. The faint crease in his brow was like a fissure, the downward turn to his mouth like a cry of pain. Bard knew if he were to reach out and cup that cheek that his hands would pass straight through it. That there would always be some things that couldn’t change, some distance couldn’t be shortened. But it didn’t feel like distance between them now. It felt like coming home.  

When Thranduil met his eyes again they were full of purpose. “I want you to stay,” he said quietly. “I don’t care if it’s selfish.”

Bard smiled a quiet smile. Slowly, he held up his hand, just like they had done so many times before. After a moment, Thranduil raised his against it. They stood like that for some time, eyes unwilling to leave each other’s faces, as if one or both of them would disappear should either of their gazes falter. But perhaps such fears were behind them now. 

“I don’t suppose you’d mind hanging around here for another fifty years or so?” Bard said.

Thranduil smiled back, hesitantly, painfully, as if he were starting something entirely new. “I suppose I could make the time.” He hesitated. “And when those fifty years are up: what then?”

“Well,” Bard said softly, “unless you feel like remaining in this house for the rest of forever, my plan was to drag you with me into the afterlife if it’s quite literally the last thing I do.”

Thranduil laughed softly. “I suppose I could live with that.”

“You won’t have to.” Bard shook his head, a faint smile on his face. “What do you think our wives will say when we finally see them again?”

Thranduil averted his eyes with a smile that mirrored Bard’s. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they were watching us all this time.”

Bard chuckled. “Please. I’m sure they have better things to do. Let’s allow the dead a little well-earned rest.”

There was nothing more to say than that.


	5. Epilogue

Sigrid stepped through the front door to the old house, breathing in the familiar smell of wood and paint and dust. She’d been spending a lot of time there after dad started getting worse. Things looked a lot better without the trays of food and somber, milling crowds, too much black and too much sound. Things were quiet now, peaceful. Back to the way they should be.

 It was hard to be sad, even as she walked through the house and saw the family portraits where they’d been left by remembering hands—Bard at her wedding, Bard holding Bain’s first child, Bard and Tilda when she received her PhD. Memory had a way of coming alive in these walls, walking in step with you with an invisible smile. Dad had lived a long life, and a good one. He’d loved this house with a fierce passion, and she could still feel that love pressed into the wooden floorboards.

She walked out back to the plot where he was buried—they’d had to work hard to allow the grave to be dedicated on this land, but dad had been very specific. The grave was simple, looking out over the lake in the shade of an oak tree. Sigrid set down a bouquet of carnations, startlingly red against the grey of the stone. A few tears stung her eyes in spite of herself, but she wiped them away with a smile.

In the last few months Bard had begun to slip away. The doctors had warned her it might happen that way, that old age did that to people. Strangely enough, Bard had started talking to someone who wasn’t there, looking sheepish whenever Sigrid caught him at it. It wasn’t until Tilda came to visit that the two of them made the connection with the ghost Tilda had invented for the house when they’d first moved here. She thought it was almost sweet that Dad had remembered for so long. He’d spoken to the ‘ghost’ like an old friend, his words full of love. He’d talked about Mom as well, mentioned making the introductions. He had asked if the ghost was sure he would come along. He’d seemed to like the answer. After a while he was talking more to the ghost than the living. Sigrid had tried not to take it personally. Bard had seemed happy, right to the end. That was what mattered, really.

She sat in the kitchen, her feet on the opposite chair, staring out past the back door to watch the sun shimmering on the lake. A faint breeze came through the door, stirring her hair like a gentle hand smoothing the strands. The sun was warm and soft, and in times like this she could almost imagine Bard was in the next room, about to come in and press a kiss to the top of her head. The house breathed long slow breaths, golden in the sunlight, as something slipped away.

She closed her eyes. It felt as if motions beyond the world were eddying around her, moving down the hallway hand in hand, trailing quiet laughter behind them.

And that, in time, faded to nothing as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading. You can find more of my work on [my tumblr](http://curmudgeony.tumblr.com/).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [flicker from view](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3768874) by [ohmyloki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyloki/pseuds/ohmyloki)




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